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In spite of all this, they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe.

I was listening to someone explain how & why he had lost faith in the God he had enjoyed throughout his childhood. It happened like this: he fell in love with a gal in high school who wasn’t a Christian. That relationship led him to question what he had been taught from church and the Bible about why there are some people who aren’t Christian. The evidence he saw around him upon investigation caused him to abandon confidence in the truth of the Bible and what he had learned at church.

As he detailed the events, he offered this distinction:

I don’t claim to prove whether God exists or not. I just don’t believe in God.

Hearing him draw a contrast, I began to see that though intertwined, these are indeed two different issues. (You can listen to the interview or access his written account of the unraveling of his faith at the link above.) What struck me was the following statement:

“I might be wrong about God. But what I’m sure of is that my search for the truth has been genuine and my beliefs are sincere.”

Some questions for thinking logical Joes and Janes:

What added value does ‘genuine’ bring to one’s search for the truth?

Does it matter if beliefs are ‘sincere’?

I’m bothered by his (and many others’ I encounter) almost cavalier, yet ‘sincere’, dismissal of just not believing in God.

Is Christianity a matter of choosing to believe? And what does it mean to ‘not believe’, or even ‘to believe’ for that matter? And what about truth?

We have a friend who is a ‘survivalist prepper’. You’ve heard of those folks. They stockpile vast supplies of food, weapons and other necessary goods so they can live independently for weeks and even months in various apocalyptic scenarios. My husband and I have not taken those kind of ‘what if’ precautions, although we do have some supplies in the event of a power outage due to storms.

Our friend, who seems very rational, might accuse us of living in denial if we say, “We don’t believe in the realistic eventuality which grounds your preparation.”

How SHOULD we respond to possible mega disaster events? Just like how we should respond to the possibility of there being a real God.

The only questions are:

What evidence is there for a likely event for which we should increase our preparation?

What evidence is there for the supernatural God as described in the Christian Bible?

And given the evidence, what is the most reasonable (reason-based) response one should make?

A more honest conclusion on the part of the man who lost his faith would be:

I don’t like where the evidence points, because I don’t want to deal with the God that the Bible describes.

And as a fully-aware, but perhaps irrational adult, I deliberately choose to put off dealing with what will happen to me when I die

Friends, I don’t know about the odds of an apocalyptic scenario happening in my lifetime. But what I do know is that there is a preponderance of evidence to give us a high degree of certainty that the triune God of the Bible (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is who He says He is as recorded in the 66 books of the Bible. Therefore, I assert that we can TRUST the written record.

Non-theistic person: – “Belief is different from knowledge. Beliefs deal in faith and feelings and knowledge deals in facts and truth.”

Is this categorization by a typical atheist correct? One often hears about the Fact/Feeling divide. The assertion postulates that there are objective facts like:

Most climate change is man-made

Life begins when a fetus is viable outside of the womb

and there are subjective feelings like:

Parenting is my most important job

Some assumptions that often are embedded in this description of the way of the world are:

Only facts are universals and can be determined to be true or false

One shouldn’t argue over the subjective, for that lies in the realm of personal opinion and preference

Beliefs and values are part of the subjective feeling realm

Faith is a belief and needs to be private

Facts are measurable and therefore indisputable

But those assumptions don’t always hold water. Values and beliefs are wedded to facts and together the two undergird and guide ALL of our actions. There is no clean divide or separation so that one can say, “These people’s actions are guided solely by facts, whereas those folks over there base their actions solely on beliefs.”

Let’s take origins. If one starts from the position that only the material realm exists, that there is nothing transcendent, that is a statement of belief. It takes FAITH to hold onto that viewpoint. It’s accepted a priori, not proven.

Consider climate change. For projections about the future, one must place faith in one’s assumptions that go into the computer model.

Turning to the belief in a personal, transcendent God. One must trust the reliability of the eyewitness accounts written in the Torah, that is the Old Testament if one is Jewish or the entire Bible if one is Christian or the Koran if one is Muslim.

Implementing an exercise program. A committed man or woman must value a more fit body AND place their faith in the specific details of the regimen to lead them to the promised results.

Logical Joes and Janes must not accept this False Dichotomy or separation. Reasonable (that is, supported by reasons) faith and values arebased on facts that one holds to be true and reliable. I put my faith in Jesus’ claims because I hold as a proven fact that His death and resurrection did take place in time and history. Thus, the historical events prove His claim to be God is to be trusted.

Explanations and discussions take time. Our sound-byte culture often doesn’t allow for more than quick assertive jabs. Logical and careful argument building take time to craft and digest. How about a campaign for SLOW THINKING à la organic and whole foods movement?

I love to read the letters to the editor

A recent one caught my eye because the author, in condemning Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, wrote:

….”no one, absolutely no one, was telling that county clerk in Kentucky what to believe. One of the founding principles of this country is that we all have the right to believe in whatever type of God we wish, and to practice that belief in whatever way we feel is appropriate.“

Really? I thought many belittled Kim Davis expressly while exercising her belief in God. Didn’t she refuse to allow her name to be on marriage certificates because she BELIEVED that this PRACTICE would NOT be APPROPRIATE? (note I am using the writer’s terms)

So the question is: Can one separate beliefs/values from actions?

If I believe that eating fresh food is healthier for me but I continue to eat processed foodstuff, am I being consistent?

Don’t we condemn as hypocritical those who espouse one thing and do another?

The truth is that Christians are increasingly going to be subject to magnifying glass scrutiny. We have to establish ahead of time WHAT we believe, WHY we believe it and WHAT we are willing to do to be integrated human beings. Beliefs are worthless when they swim around as vague, unsubstantiated opinions.

Let’s ground our beliefs IN reason. And if we can’t come up with a solid defense for WHY we believe what we espouse, then maybe it’s time to jettison that value. There’s no shame in abandoning a position or changing one’s mind for solid justification. And it’s no discredit to be honest and admit:

I don’t have any reason for believing X, I just WANT to believe X

At least that’s sincere and authentic. And while it’s okay to ‘park’ in that spot for a while, we shouldn’t stay there. Let’s take the time to examine why holding such a belief would be rational and worthwhile. The best reason to hold and practice a belief is because it is true.

I heard a former French atheist claim that belief in God was ‘properly basic‘.

I had to look it up to understand what was meant.

It seems that whatever belief we hold must be justifiable. We have to supply a proper or legitimate reason for believing. That is, when we can provide a ‘proper’ reason for why we hold something to be true, then we are in our ‘intellectual rights’ for believing it to be so. So what is a kind of reason that would lead to something being a legitimate belief?

The easiest source for a good reason or foundation is to deduce a new truth from a prior accepted truth. Sounds cut and dry…yet…you can end up following an ‘infinite regress’, a I believe this because of that. And I believe THAT because of ANOTHER THAT..resulting in an unending pointing back to the prior belief à la ‘world without end, Amen!’

Fortunately some beliefs are considered ‘properly basic’ in that you don’t have to explain WHY you believe that they are so. These beliefs are often mathematical or logical in scope. But some people will claim that belief in God is ‘properly basic’, that no proof is needed. They will say, “Well you believe that minds other than yours exist, right? How do you prove that? You wouldn’t even be able to THINK about whether God existed if He hadn’t created reason, so belief in God is a starting point – hence ‘properly basic’.”

So how do we sort out whether something fits the ‘properly basic’ category or not? Just be able to answer the question: Why do you believe XYZ?

You have 2 choices:

a) you can say – I believe XYZ because it’s a properly basic belief and doesn’t need proof. And then you EXPLAIN why that is so.

or

b) you can say – I believe XYZ for this reason….. and you provide a proper basis for your thinking.

In other words – just know what you believe and why you think it is so!

But what constitutes a ‘proper’ reason outside of one that is ‘properly basic’? This requires making some distinctions, AKA thinking!

The above explanation might suffice for why you married your partner, but that won’t work for most anything else. With love, you might be saying that your feelings are based on a whim. Or at best they are a result of something that you can’t put into words.

But for other issues, like why you feel hopeful about the future, or why you are a democrat, or why you eat gluten-free or why you hold to a naturalist worldview or why you have chosen to homeschool, or why you believe that human nature doesn’t change – these beliefs must be supported by something else. Here are a few possibilities:

you believe because your 5 senses offer evidence that the belief is true (and you trust your senses) – I SAW the airplane land with my own eyes!

you believe because you can make a logically deductive case for the belief – All men make mistakes. John is a man. Therefore, he makes mistakes.

you have probable cause to believe due to previous experiences – Every time I eat wheat bread, my stomach is upset. When I substitute gluten-free bread, my stomach is fine. Therefore, I do better on a gluten-free diet.

you believe because it is self-evident or axiomatic, as uncontroversial as “The sun always rises in the east.”

you believe because someone or something authoritative that you trust has claimed it to be so. For example: George Washington was our 1st president. I trust the history books and the oil paintings that we have portraying Washington.

Whether a belief is ‘properly basic’ or not might be more than you care to remember, and you might have to google it like I did the next time you hear it. But, the take away is this:

We need to be able to articulate not only WHAT we believe, but WHY we hold something to be true.

Question:What is your strongest, most passionate belief that you are quickest to defend? And what would you say grounds it? Or is IT, in fact, ‘properly basic’ and does not need any reason or defense?